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9 week old pup watching sheep on youtube


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There is usually a third option; nonsensical. It won't do anything for your dog in relation to stockwork, even if (and that's a big if) he realizes he is  looking at sheep, there is obviously nothing he can do with them. I don t see any reason why one would try to make a dog interested in sheep on a screen.

If you tried this on your pup and you noticed he was interested in this chances are it was just the moving stuff in front of his nose. And not unlikely any video would have had that effect. I would not want my pup to become reactive to any moving thing in its surrounding. So good, certainly not. Bad? Could be, so why even risk it? Plenty of usefull stuff to do with your dog ( personally I think every activity that makes me put the bloody phone away is great...).

Anyway, you are posting in the stockwork section, are you planning to do that with this pup?

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I think it depends entirely on how the dog reacts to TV. If he's reactive or wants to chase movement, then either don't allow it or work with the dog to control his reactions, like watching quietly.

I've had 2 dogs who watched TV and knew what they were watching rather than simply reacting to movement. The first was a TV addict. He'd watch anything, even the weather. He'd get excited by anything more interesting than that and would want to stand with his nose right up to the screen. I taught him to lie an appropriate distance from the screen so that he was not only not practicing obsession but also not blocking the view.

I disagree that dogs, at least some dogs, simply react to movement on the screen. This dog especially liked anything with animals and in particular, dogs. He'd watch a commercial with a dog in it the first time, then the second time remember it and anticipate the dog showing up again. By the third time he saw it he was at full attention waiting for the exact moment the dog would show up. He had favorite programs, especially wildlife programs. He had a favorite series, Marty Stouffer's Wild America. Hearing Marty's voice would bring him racing from any part of the house to watch. He had a favorite episode, one where Marty followed a wolf pack through a breeding season. He was rapt when that episode was run. And he was an entirely different dog if we put a tape of a sheepdog trail or training -- not merely seeing sheep but the interaction of a dog working sheep. He was completely focused and engaged following every whistle or cue and he often couldn't contain his excitement and broke his "lie down" in front of the TV.

My current TV watcher is fear reactive w/ dogs. For a while she watched TV looking for dogs to come on the screen so she could bark at them to fend them off. She also knew every commercial that had a dog in it (I didn't realize how many drug commercials have dogs in them until I had a dog reactive TV watcher :rolleyes:) and anticipated them, even learning to recognize music and narrators that recurred in specific companies' ad and anticipating that there may be a dog in the new commercial. We sat for hours watching dog shows (ugh!) and dog competitions doing desensitization and counter-conditioning so that she could eventually relax and now ignore the dogs on TV. In fact, now that she's not reacting to the dogs, she rarely bothers to watch.

My dogs who've watched TV were definitely in the minority. Most have shown no interest beyond the occasional passing curiosity about a sound (usually barking or howls) and haven't reacted to movement. So your pup may or may not even respond to the TV if you do expose him to it. If he does, it's unlikely he'd actually learn anything from it other than how to behave in response to stimulation, and that would require deliberate training from you.

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